Report on the cholera which visited Her Majesty's Black Sea Fleet in the autumn of 1854 / by B.G. Babington.

  • Babington, B. G. (Benjamin Guy), 1794-1866.
Date:
[1855?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the cholera which visited Her Majesty's Black Sea Fleet in the autumn of 1854 / by B.G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    their service, called on to do, they do it zealously, no doubt, but still as a matter of duty. In placing, therefore, a series of questions before them, the answers they give are likely to be complete, because they are asked through the medium of authority, which they are bound to obey ; and those answers, be it remembered, come from gentlemen who are not ob- truding on us views and theories which they are interested in supporting, but simply replying to the best of their abilities to questions which have not originated with or been suggested by themselves. It will be at once perceived that information of this kind, all bearing upon the same points of inquiry, and yet supplied by numerous medical men in isolated positions, and holding no necessary communication with each other, must have a peculiar value ; so that, if ever the cause of this mysterious epidemic is to be discovered, it is highly probable that it will be through the medium of some such investigation as that of which this report records the result. Nor is the nature of the testimony, independent as it is, the only peculiarity in reports from naval medical men. The cir- cumstances with which that testimony is connected are peculiar also. Every ship is an isolated assemblage of persons who are always under the eye of their medical officers, and every event bearing on health or disease being as a matter of duty care- fully noted, there is afforded an opportunity rarely met with under any other circumstances, of tracing the origin of all deviations from the healthy condition. In a town, we inquire with especial minuteness into all the circumstances attending the first two or three cases of cholera. They are the most instructive of any. In a fleet, every individual ship is, as it were, a separate town; and these instances of first cases, accurately noted, are as nume- rous as are the ships in which cholera has occurred. Again, if we consider the crew or inhabitants among whom the disease appears, we find that they are all placed under nearly the same circumstances; or, if there be any difference, as in the case of officers, as contradistinguished from men before the mast; of marines, as contradistinguished from men who go aloft; of engineers and stokers, who lead a confined life, in contradistinction to other seamen, who are constantly exposed to the air; that difference is definite. We know in what work or occupation every soul on board has been en- gaged ; wTe know to what vicissitudes of climate they have all been exposed ; we know precisely what has been their diet and beverage, what the space which has been allotted to each during the hours of sleep; in short, we know more about